The end of Mac gaming

Gaming on the Mac got some good news at WWDC '07, but it may be bad news for …

Longtime Apple fans know that when Steve Jobs speaks, you had better listen closely. The WWDC 07 Keynote was no exception. In this case, the topic was gaming, and the news sounded great.

"Next up, got some great news about games: EA, number one publisher of games, is coming back to the Mac in a big way."

Unfortunately, as Bill Clinton might say regarding games not involving any personal technology, it depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is. Electronic Arts is indeed releasing several titleson the Mac during 2007, but without getting too metaphysical, there is the question of what a Mac game "is." The EA games will not be ports and will not be native to the platform. Instead, EA will make use of technology licensed from TransGaming called Cider.

Cider is a sophisticated portability engine that allows Windows games to be run on Intel Macs without any modifications to the original game source code. Cider works by directly loading a Windows program into memory on an Intel-Mac and linking it to an optimized version of the Win32 APIs. Games are "wrapped" with the Cider engine and they simply run on the Mac.

If the implications aren't obvious, why should companies like Aspyr work to port Windows games to the Mac, when all one needs is de facto emulation? After all, unlike other types of software, a game offers up its own unique experience, including a user interface. There is no "Mac Way" to be missed within Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. However, it's likely there will be at least some performance hit playing a game under Cider technology versus a native version. Don't count on that saving "true" Mac gaming. Included with Boot Camp in Leopard may be technology that will likely render Cider as obsolete as Cider makes native ports.

That's right, no pesky restarts to get into Windows. Instead, the Apple menu will have a "Restart into Windows" option, which will put your Mac into a "safe sleep" state, then boot Windows. Over on the other side, you'll be able to Hibernate your Windows install, then switch back to OS X right where you left off.

Combine this with Intel Turbo Memory, the technology formerly known as Robson, and you may see the equivalent of Fast User Switching for operating systems. Plus you get the entirety of the Windows gaming universe, not just what EA and other companies deem to wrap in Cider. Given the reality of the technology, it's difficult to see the future of gaming on the Mac the way it has been in the past, but is that really such a bad thing?